Meritocracy is a Lie

I wish I had listened when someone told me that meritocracy is a lie. Publication depends on so many different things – the work, the editor, the author, the time it is submitted.

Different writers have different experiences because people are different. What works for someone else will not work for me. I look at other writers’ experiences as things to try out, as possible future experiments. In the past, I thought it worked like in science – you do steps A, B, and then C and then you get a result.

Life? Not so much.

The only thing that matters going forward is what works for me and the only way to find out what works for me to is put the work out there. It’ s never served me to argue with reality.

But to say that everyone’s career is the same and to not acknowledge that it takes less for some people to succeed than others? The only people who would say that are people who have benefited from such a system. It’s a blind spot. And everyone has blind spots. I know I have them in my life because previous blind spots became visible when what once worked for me stopped.

Everything ends.

So, in my current iteration of my career, while I’m trying to figure everything out, I’m planning on taking another tip from my fitness journey – storeytelling is for the rest of my life and just like I could possibly do everything righ tand still have to take some medication, this writing thing, might not work out financially.

My goals must be what I can control and be happy with that. As a results-oriented person, this is a hard conclusion to come to, y’all.

This blog is where I work out all the messes. I didn’t name my newsletter A Messy Creative for nothing.

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About Irette Y Patterson

Irette Y Patterson is a writer of fantasy, science fiction, and romance. She has been published in FIYAH, Strange Horizons, Translunar Travelers Lounge and on the website of The Saturday Evening Post. When not writing, you can find her digging around in her garden or catching the latest musical in the theater.
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